1962 Topps #342 Ed Rakow
About Ed Rakow
Card #342 in the fourth series is Rakow's first Topps card as an Athletic, and it sits on top of his first full big-league season. The 1961 line reads 2-8, which badly undersells the work behind it: 45 appearances, 11 starts, 124 2/3 innings and 81 strikeouts for a Kansas City club that lost 100 games. His year turned on May 22, after which he put up a 1.57 ERA over his next 11 outings, and the milestones followed. He beat Minnesota on July 2 for his first major-league win, then went the distance on July 14 for his first complete game, an 8-3 decision over Washington, as the A's moved him out of the bullpen and into the rotation.
Edward Charles Rakow, born in Pittsburgh on May 30, 1935, was a 5-foot-11 right-hander who pitched parts of seven big-league seasons between 1960 and 1967 for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kansas City Athletics, Detroit Tigers and Atlanta Braves, finishing 36-47 with a 4.33 ERA, 20 complete games and 484 strikeouts in 761 1/3 innings. His hometown Pirates turned him away from tryouts, judging neither his fastball nor his 178-pound frame big-league material, and he was driving a truck and pitching semipro ball around Pittsburgh when a chance meeting with Brooklyn Dodgers scout Doc Ruppan at a friend's wedding in October 1956 finally got him a contract. He rose fast enough that an International League official compared him to Don Drysdale in 1959, but arm trouble and a deep Los Angeles staff sent him to Kansas City in March 1961, where he became the Athletics' workhorse and chose to pitch through the shoulder and arm pain that shadowed the rest of his career. He retired in 1968, drove trucks for a living, and in 1989 was a player-coach for the West Palm Beach Tropics of the Senior Professional Baseball Association. He died in West Palm Beach on August 26, 2000.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 204 | 0 | 4 | 68 | 100 | 21 | 8 | 3 | 0 |
| SGC | 15 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Snapshot 2026-09-24. Half-grades fold down (8.5→8), and PSA's qualified grades are counted separately from the straight-grade rows shown here. Slabs of the three cards printed #139 are joined by description, never by number alone. PSA registers the green tints as a separate set; a tint's population is listed under that state of the card it belongs to.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #342 card?
It is card #342 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ed Rakow of the Kansas City Athletics.
How many cards are in the 1962 Topps Baseball set?
600 cards, tracked as 708 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps, but three different cards were printed #139 - two Hal Reniff poses, catalogued 139a and 139b, and the Babe Hits 60 Babe Ruth Special, 139c - so 598 numbers make 600 cards; 93 cards carry catalogued print variations, the series-2 green tints among them, that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Baseball Almanac, Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, The Topps Archives, Baseball-Reference, the SABR BioProject and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-03.